Meat Matters

I am embarrassed by my naivety. What I’m about to discuss may be obvious to you, but I’ve been ridiculously blindsided by the wealth of information that I’ve recently been reading and researching. To be honest, I don’t even really know completely what to do with this knowledge because I’m so overwhelmed by it all, and feel that my perspective on practically everything in the world has been altered, and not in such a good way. So bare with me as I bumble along here, trying to make sense of what I have learned. Also note that what I’m about to share is completely my perspective and in no way is a judgment of you and what you choose to do in your life. I’m simply in a stage of self-enlightenment.

This started late last year, when my friend called me up and said, “You should see the guy that is on Ellen. He’s talking about meat. He wrote some kind of book about meat.” That piqued my interest. People that know me know that I’ve been sitting on the vegetarian fence for some time now. God damn it, I love vegetables and I’m not going to be ashamed to show it! (Even though I actually get teased about eating vegetables, especially if it’s tofu, which I’ll always think is kind of weird. It’s like teasing someone for wearing glasses. I’ve never understood that one either.) So, I got the book. And I waited until after Christmas to read it because I knew that I would be eating meat at Christmas and I wanted to continue to be ignorant of the truth one last time.

Then I read the book. It’s called, “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer.

I have this habit of folding the bottom corner of pages in books when there’s something poignant that has piqued my interest, and then I go back to it and re-read that information and absorb it again. Well, about twenty pages in, I noticed that I had folded every bottom corner and I was in a conundrum because if I fold the corner on page 21 then I won’t know that there was something stimulating to go back to on page 22. So, I started highlighting information instead. Then after I read the whole book (which actually kept me up at night a couple of times) I started writing down those highlighted points in a word document. Wouldn’t you know it, I ended up extracting information from practically every page about things I didn’t know; I had no idea what was occurring in our world. (Refer to my blog called “Happy Facebook Bubble World” written in October of 2009.)

Ok, so then I sorted through the information I documented and decided to make topic headings so that I could begin to put this information into organized sections. These were the topics that I ended up coming up with: pollution, “designer” foods, cruelty/suffering, sanctuaries, cognitive abilities, “Big Daddy” companies, kosher?, human rights, efficiency, change/growth, health, employment, disease, pharmacy, memories, vegetarians, vegans, pasture farming, ecosystems, reality, evolution, manipulation. Holy shit. How am I going to turn this into a nice little bloggy something or another for everyone to sink their teeth into and get my thoughts across to not only myself but my readers? I’m at a total loss so I’ll just babble and highly recommend that you read the book for yourself.

Ok so, first of all, I just keep on thinking, “Geeze, I don’t want people to think that I’m trying to convert them to being a vegetarian,” because ultimately, I’M not a vegetarian and I hate being preached to about anything, even if it’s something I believe in. It’s definitely the anarchist in me that just likes to rebel from everything. I think that we as humans just hate being told that we’re doing something wrong, even if we know it’s wrong. I can connect this to my years as a smoker. There was a lot of fear connected to the prospect of quitting because I really liked smoking. I liked feeling like I was a part of a club in a way that had great conversations while we stood outside together, and when we walked back in to the non-smoking space, it was like we knew something more than everyone else. Kinda ironic, isn’t it? And there was a lot of fear with the idea of quitting smoking, and ultimately it’s easy to make every excuse in the book. The brain is powerfully manipulative, especially to oneself. I played some crazy tricks on my own mind to convince myself that it was ok to have just one or two cigarettes here and there. I met someone not too long ago that justified his smoking by saying it was his way of screwing over the government. Wow. His mind certainly went through a labyrinth to get to that point.
But this is about eating meat, not smoking. So the next thing I started thinking about was my memories with meat. (Get your mind out of the gutter, where I know it is right now. Oh, maybe that’s just me. Haha) I started thinking about how growing up in my home, we always had some kind of dead animal hanging in our garage with its tongue hanging out and blood dripping into a bucket. I thought about the humongous, delicious hamburgers that my dad makes every year on the barbecue for Mother’s day, stating that they’re “better than McDonalds by a long shot” (and they are). I think about sitting at the dinner table as a kid, passing my pork chop bone to my dad so he can suck the marrow out of it. I think of the summer sausage that used to hang over the kitchen sink so that it would dry and the fats would slowly drain out of it, and we’d have to ask to cut a slab off. It was a genuine treat. We’re Polish/Ukrainian, so meat was always a BIG DEAL in our home. But the farm meat that my dad and mom grew up with versus the farm meat I’ve grown up with are two completely different things. Absolutely 100% different and that’s petrifying.

Go ahead and find a kid that you know, or even one that you don't know, and ask them to draw a picture of a farm. Ask them specifically to draw a picture of where chickens, pigs and cows live and I bet you they’ll draw a picture of a barn and a silo and pigs rolling in mud, and cows in a pasture, when in reality these animals are just extensions of machinery and do not have access to the outdoor world at all. We live in a world of factory farming and until a couple of months ago, I was pretty damn oblivious to what the hell that actually really meant and what that means to me as a consumer.

This is what that means:

*99% of all meat is “created” in a factory farm.

*More than 250 million male “layer” chicks are killed each year, live, wood-chipper style. What do you think happens to that “meat” once it’s ground up? What is chicken meal?

*Many cows die slow painful deaths on factory floors simply because they haven’t been given water. They’re called “downers”. They’re tossed, live, into dumpsters.

*After a layer chicken has been forced to lay eggs over the course of one year, (they are unnaturally pushed to produce 300 eggs which is 2/3 more than their normal amount) they are killed because it’s more economically efficient to kill them and start again then it is to have chickens producing less eggs the second year. Chickens can normally live around 20 years.

*“Free range” chickens are 30 000 chickens on a factory floor with a small door at one end that opens to a 5x5 foot dirt patch. Do you think the chickens have come up with a rotational system so that all 30 000 of them have an opportunity to get some “fresh air”? (Also, the similar terminology of “cage free” or “free run” that you will find on egg cartons also applies to this concept.)

*KFC should never be consumed under any circumstances.

*A kosher slaughterhouse is as rare as a virginal bride.

*Chickens, turkeys and pigs are genetically designed to grow fast. They cannot bear their own weight and end up disabled by their own body.

*Many chickens are smarter than people but their sense of pain is not considered by most.

*If you cut a dog or cats throat open and ripped their trachea and esophagi out while they’re alive, you’d go to jail for a long, long time. But not if it’s a cow.

*Grab a ruler and measure out a rectangle that is 7 x 8.5 inches. That is the size of the cage a chicken lives its life in. Cage free birds also have about that much space because there are so many of them on the factory floor, so “cage free” is just as cruel.

*Most factory farmers calculate how close they can keep their animals to death without actually killing them to save on water and food.

*Upward of 95% of chickens become infected with E coli.

*Chlorine baths are commonly used to remove slime, odor and bacteria from meat.

*Chicken meat is soaked in a big bath, along with their feces, pus, and harmful bacteria. This makes the chicken you eat “plumper” looking. Sounds tasty, doesn’t it? They can call this “brine” to give you the impression that they were nice enough to marinate the meat for you. Mmmmm.

*While Americans ingest approximately 3 million pounds of antibiotics each year, factory farmed animals ingest approximately 17 million pounds of antibiotics. The factory farm industry is in alliance with the pharmaceutical industry which doesn’t give the public health professionals a lot of support. Go figure.

*Scientists at Columbia and Princeton Universities have actually been able to trace six of the eight genetic segments of the most feared viruses in the world directly to US factory farms.

*Vegetarians and vegans meet and exceed requirements for protein.

*Animal protein intake is linked to osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones and cancers.

*Nearly one third of the land surface of the planet is dedicated to livestock, mainly in the form of factory farms.

*Real farmers do not work on factory farms. Use of the term "farm" is hypocritical.

*In the states, animal manure is not put through treatment plants, and large lagoons are created to hold acrid animal manure. People have actually died in them. Pigs have been inhumanely forced to run in to them and die.

*Alexander and I did some math based on a pig plant in Brandon, Manitoba. They get 75 000 pigs going through their plant in one week. In our community of 5000 people, that would mean getting 15 pigs each per week, resulting in 780 pigs per person per year. That is one plant, and one town. Who is eating all this meat? A family of four can live off the meat of a moose for a whole winter.

*Factory farm animals (cows, pigs, turkeys, chickens, even if babies or pregnant) are repeatedly abused the following ways: bludgeoned with wrenches and rakes, poles rammed into rectums and vaginas, slammed onto concrete floors until their eyes pop out, cigarette butts put out on their bodies, strangled, thrown into manure piles to drown, electrically prodded in the eyes, ears, anus, mouth, beaks ripped off, stomped on, spit on, body parts such as the ears and nose sliced off while alive, urinated on…..does that help in making the food tastier, I wonder?


I know what you’re probably thinking right now. Stop already! Stop giving me the gory details!!!! Yet again, our mind does not want us to know this information because it’s easier to eat McDonalds or canned meat or a reuban sandwich if we have no idea what actually happened in the process of creating that meat. We are so separated from the food that we consume that we don’t even think about the prospects of whether it was an animal or not, let alone how it was treated or raised (and I use the term “raised” loosely). We just don’t see “whole foods” anymore in the grocery store. A friend of mine said, “You’ll know if you’ve got a good chicken because it will be packaged with its feet still attached.” I can’t say that I’ve EVER seen a chicken in a grocery store with its feet attached, but I bet there would be an outcry in our community if that happened. They would be grossed out. People buy food in fancy boxes with bold labels that tell them how much fat and protein they’re ingesting. I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but the freezer section in grocery stores seems to be getting bigger and bigger, expanding on the amount of processed foods there are so that we forget that there is a chunk of animal in that box. Meat is being mulched and pressed into cute shapes and covered with sauces and breading and given exotic names. Would you buy something called “Pig Meat in a Box”? People get grossed out when I ask if they've ever accidentally "crunched" on something in a chicken burger or chicken fingers, and then tell them that the bones and feet of the chicken are also ground up with the chicken meat when those "burgers" are created. They should be grossed out. They wouldn't eat it if it was called "Breaded Ground up Chicken Feet and Bones and Rotten Meat Patties".

I remember when I was in New York last summer with my friend we were hard pressed to find a decent grocery store and when we did, we found that the prices of everything were astronomical. Nobody in New York cooks at home. Everyone eats in amazing restaurants and not so amazing street vendors. It’s actually more economical to do so and the factory farm owner thinks that‘s awesome. As long as people are not handling meat, and seeing blood, and touching real flesh, they won’t have to concern themselves with what actually happens in the process of getting that meat to the table.

And then I was reminded of my time in Luxembourg, in 1999. We had stopped in a quaint little town, and I remember being shocked by a display in the butcher shop’s window. It was a display of a Mamma pig and her piglets, taxidermied, of course. I remember commenting on how disgusting that was, to actually see what you’re going to eat before you buy it! That’s about as ridiculous as thinking it’s gross to see a cantaloupe or a bag of potatoes. My, how my perspective has changed. The Europeans don’t have any secret diet. They simply know what they’re eating.
And still after all this contemplation; I STILL played mind games with myself. I said to myself, “Well, this is just happening in America! This isn’t happening in Canada.” So again, I did my research, and it is ultimately the same, and most meat factories and food processing plants in Canada are run by “Big Daddy” companies outside of our country. The lines get blurred between what happens in Canada and what happens in the states. There’s even a Canadian form of the PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) called CETFA which stands for Canadians for the Ethical Treatment of Food Animals. And when you start reading on their site, you see that it’s all the same everywhere, which is not good. That research took me to other sites and other sites, and I became more and more skeptical and ultimately had to make some choices and that is why I have chosen to not eat any factory farmed meat again.

Now, this really limits my choices in some ways if I want to eat something out of a can, because meat is thrown into a lot of things, like Habitant split pea soup and Libby’s pork and beans. I borrowed a can of Chef Boyardee from a friend because I was curious to see what they say about the meat products on their labeling. It says that it is “prepared for ConAgra Foods” This company is responsible for a high percentage of all canned foods. The company touts itself as “foods you’ll love”. Check out their website, and then do a google search with their name and add the word “fine” to it, and you’ll get a different story about their “food” (Yes, I am purposely putting the word “food” in quotations.) I’m more than willing to give that up for wholesome, fresh foods that come as close to the original source as possible.

And that can still include eating meat because on a positive note, it has made me realize in my research that there seems to be a revolution going on as well. As people are seeing the truth of meat, they too are making changes. Canada has a lot of “grass roots” farmers that are interested in the humane treatment and slaughter of animals, and the care of our land. These are the people I want to talk to and learn more from, and buy products from. And they’re not far away from where I live either, so I can actually make that trip down the road and make that choice instead of having a big company that hides their (half dead) animals behind big locked steel doors make that choice for me.

It also made me really proud of the people in my community that hunt. That may sound like a paradox to you, but I have never heard a story of a hunter in the area beating a moose to death with a shovel, or slicing off its nose alive or urinating on it as it slowly takes its last breath. Animals that are killed in our community are given the respect they deserve and completely appreciated. I know one woman that uses absolutely every single part of that moose that she kills, including the bones, which she turns into beautiful jewelery. These hunters have my respect. They are given a lot of flack by “city slickers” who think our practices are cruel. The irony is that they’ll go to a restaurant and order veal or foie gras while having the discussion about their barbaric neighbours to the north. Hmmmm…….

It’s kind of amazing actually how far we’ve come. We don’t allow PCB’s to be used anymore. We refuse to use CFC’s because of what they’ve done to the environment. Most of us recycle what we can. Composting is becoming a common household practice in many homes (What? You’re not composting yet?). Many of us refuse to buy products that have first been injected into the eyes of lab bunnies. And the only way this has come about is by someone that has been bold enough to expose the truth. A lot of the information that Mr. Foer received for his book was shared by people from the factory farm industry itself that couldn’t keep their mouths closed about what occurs on factory farms. Exposure is what creates truth, and I’m feeling enlightened.

If after reading this, your mind continues to play tricks on you about the reality of these facts, perhaps you’ll have the ability to watch “Meet Your Meet”. I’ll provide that link along with some other interesting cites at the end of this article.

Now, where’s that tofu recipe……..

The Canadian Ethical Treatment of Food Animals

Jonathan Safran Foer's link to his book "Eating Animals"

Canadian Vegan online shopping

"Meet Your Meat"

Niman Ranch

Polyfarming

*Most of the information extracted for this blog is from "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer.

**I am including a map of the Dryden area that a friend just passed on to me. These are local organic farmers that have humane and healthy practices. Something to think about at least, if you happen to be in the neighbourhood. There are choices out there. Hooray!